had recognized that
the peculiar character of judgment consists in _active connection_. The
rationalists made judgment an active function, it is true, but a mere
activity of conscious development, of elucidation and analytical inference,
which does not advance knowledge a single step. The empiricists described
it as a process of comparison and discrimination, as the mere perception
and recognition of the relations and connections already existing between
ideas; while in reality judgment does not discover the relations and
connections of representations, but itself establishes them. In the former
case the synthetic moment is ignored, in the latter the active moment. The
imperfect view of judgment was one of the reasons for the appearance of
extreme theories concerning the origin of ideas in reason or in perception.
Rationalism regards even those concepts which have a content as innate,
whereas it is only formal concepts which are so. Empiricism regards all,
even the highest formal concepts (the categories), as abstracted from
experience, whereas experience furnishes only the content of knowledge,
and not the synthesis which is necessary to it. On the one hand too much,
and on the other too little, is regarded as the original possession of the
understanding. The question "What concepts are innate?" can be decided only
by answering the further question, What are the concepts through which the
faculty of judgment connects the representations obtained from experience?
These connective concepts, these formal instruments of synthesis are
_a priori_. The agreement of the two schools is still greater in regard to
the relation of sense and understanding, notwithstanding the apparently
sharp contrast between them. The empiricist considers thought transformed,
sublimated perception, while the rationalist sees in perception only
confused and less distinct thought. For the former concepts are faded
images of sensations, for the latter sensations are concepts which have not
yet become clear; the difference is scarcely greater than if the one should
call ice frozen water, and the other should prefer to call water melted
ice. Both arrange intuition and thought in a single series, and derive the
one from the other by enhancement or attenuation. Both make the mistake of
recognizing only a difference in degree where a difference in kind exists.
In such a case only an energetic dualism can afford help. Sense and
understanding are not one and t